November 21, 2012

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

I understand player safety, but my issue with further penalizing that hit is that I see Sanders actually lowering his head into Reed. Reed's head was down and would have hit chest-high with the initial body positioning. It's when Sanders turns around and literally lowers his head to Reed's level on the final step that causes the helmet to helmet. This play is as much Sanders lowering his helmet into Reed as it is Reed leading with his helmet.

If Sanders had stayed down and not popped right up after the Ed Reed hit, would the suspension have been lifted. Think the NFL opened a can of worms on this one.

Hello? Is that NHL on line 2? Oh, NHL isn't in session so I guess NFL needs to take the place of trying to assess penalties based on injury.

So Chelsea fired Roberto Di Matteo last night, after his team lost 3-0 to Juventus. Chelsea could be the first defending champions to fail to make it out of the group stages if Juve can get at least draw in Donetsk.

Turns out the two season deal Chelsea gave Di Matteo meant "summer and autumn."

Di Matteo, wow. I mean Chelsea are two points out of first and still have a small chance to get out of the group in UCL. Plus he's had one transfer window to bring in players--granted he got some good ones but he was stuck with Torres up top and couldn't get a senior striker in after losing Drogba. I do wonder why Sturridge hasn't been given more minutes but that's a small nit.

I just wonder if Guardiola told Abramovitch that he would come in the summer but he didn't want to directly replace the man who took Chelsea to the UCL title when the team was cratering. Rumor has it that Roman really wanted Pep this past June but he wanted some time off.